(For someone on the other side of the aisle, Ron, you hold an awful lot of opinions I agree with.)

As for candy cigarettes (or tobacco gum, although I’d never even heard of it before this thread), I never intended to make the argument that “I had them when I was a kid and I don’t smoke, therefore they’re OK.” As Bonnie said so well upthread, parents have to use their best judgment and keep their fingers crossed. Restricting too much can backfire too. We sometimes indulge our daughter’s faddish whims, and sometimes don’t, on the theory that she needs to learn to tell the difference between yo-yos and binge drinking. (Although my Puritan ancestry did come out the other day when I told her she was some years away from wearing makeup to school. Apparently she was just running it up the flagpole, because she immediately wiped most of it off.)

I’m all for informed choices. The tobacco industry isn’t big on real information; it tends to scare off the customers.

OTOH, I think that realistically, the U.S. could and should cease any government support for tobacco production or distribution. Even to the point of subsidizing the conversion of tobacco farms to other crops.

Maybe what should be done is to permit the manufacture of candy cigarettes in the U.S., and then ban the manufacture and sale of real cigarettes.

Perhaps Ron could speak for himself?

chewie
http://www.killthecan.org/

And when I was a kid, cars didn’t have seat belts. So there!

But, FWIW, I absolutely do NOT think that candy cigarettes or the like have have no discernible effect on kids’ willingness to smoke whatsoever. My only reason for not fully supporting an all-out ban is that I’m not sure it would do any good in the long run, just like every other ban out there. That doesn’t mean, however, that I wouldn’t be for restrictions — and, for that matter, I wouldn’t actually be opposed to a ban, either.

And, FWIW, I think the “the new philosophy of ‘personal responsibility is the buyer’s problem; the people who actually sell, manufacture and market the stuff have no personal responsibility at all’” ‘ is ridiculous and quite stupid. And I think of the same philosophy of “it never hurt me, so can’t be anything wrong with it.” If that were true, most of us would still be going sans seatbelt and sunbathing with baby oil.

mythago was sarcastically using “caveat emptor” to mean the new philosophy of “personal responsibility is the buyer’s problem; the people who actually sell, manufacture and market the stuff have no personal responsibility at all.”

Again, if you think candy tobacco products have no discernable effect on kids’ willingness to smoke whatsoever, you have to think that Big Tobacco is really, really stupid, because they’ve been quietly allowing and/or supporting candy knockoffs of their products in return for no benefit whatsoever.

I’m not for banning it, but I am for “caveat emptor,” as mythago says. I don’t know that banning or taxing or any of things actually works. Maybe there are studies that prove these things work, I don’t know. But based on empirical and anecdotal evidence, I’d say adamantly no.

I used to live in South Carolina. There, people smoked EVERYWHERE. There were only a few counties that had any sort of smoking bans (and in one county that ban was overturned). Yet, I was one of the very few smokers among my social group (made up primarily of people I met through my own social service work - coworkers, friends of coworkers, people working on similar causes as me, etc.). It was very rare for anyone in my line of work to smoke. They tended to be very health conscious, veg*ns, bike riders, etc.

So, 2 years ago, I move to Portland, OR, which is like a mecca for the health-conscious, the veg*ns, bike rides, etc. There are smoking bans EVERYWHERE, with new ones every day it seems. So imagine my surprise when I discover that about 75% of coworkers (same field) smoke. Yeah, many of them are veg*n bike riders, but they still smoke. I have never met so many smokers in my life as I have in Portland.

Ironically, I was hoping the move to Portland would help me quit smoking. Instead, I find myself smoking more. (That’s my responsibility, not trying to blame anyone — I just thought being in a more smoking-unfriendly city would encourage me to not smoke. Instead I’m finding that all my co-workers want to take smoke breaks with me, and my friends all smoke around me. Makes it hard to quit in that type of environment.)

Agreed. But clearly, some children (maybe even most) are able to discern the difference. Maybe it’s more important to teach children how to avoid being coerced by marketing agencies. It’s certainly possible - takes a lot of stong parenting, and development of critical thinking skills which is not easy, but possible nonetheless. I suspect that skill will be more beneficial over time than simply banning the impressionable substance.

“Really, I’m not arguing for any kind of governmental ban; tobacco is a legal product. ”

Then what are we arguing about? LOL. I agree that children are susceptible to the messages… I just don’t think banning the product is the answer to reducing that susceptibility.

For the first 65 or so years, the major cigarette corporations either looked the other way or took an active part in ensuring that the candy package reproductions were “faithful” to their less-appealing tobacco brothers. For some reason, a lot of people believe candy cigarettes were “totally outlawed” in the United States sometime in the past, when in actuality, the major players have remained one step ahead of governmental regulation via sluggish self-policing and a strong commitment to what ESPN would call “Extreme Hiding.”

Really, I’m not arguing for any kind of governmental ban; tobacco is a legal product. But I’m also not buying the idea that little kids are such sharp-eye cynics that Phillip Morris can’t lay a glove on ‘em. (Kids may not be stupid, but if they don’t start smoking as teenagers or earlier it’s likely they never will.)

I don’t think the existence of candy cigarettes has much at all to do with smoking - the drop in availability of candy cigarettes is an artifact of the reduction of smoking in society. Candy cigarettes are still legal to make, import, and sell in the U.S., but unpopular compared to when I was young. (They’re now called “candy sticks” or “stix” in most U.S. markets.)

No, the way to keep people from smoking is to not let smoking become a popular activity, either as mainstream or rebellious.

Tax the crap out of them, like Oregon wants to do with Measure 50 - an 84.5 cent-a-pack cigarette tax to fund children’s health care. Naturally, the tobacco companies are angry - they’ve sent over $6 million to promote the theory that cheaper cigarettes are better than health care for children.

Children don’t have to be stupid to be impressionable, and to absorb messages like “smoking is something grownups do”. Is Robert’s statement really that controversial?

nobody.really, nobody has proposed making it illegal to chew gum cigarettes.

Ah, no. That stuff goes between your gum and your lip or cheek as well.

To what extent may government restrict legal behavior because it might lead to illegal behavior? I rarely find much consistency in the answers to these questions. On one end of the spectrum we restrict public ownership of various weapons, even though ownership itself is harmless, as a means to restricting the criminal use or threatened use of those weapons. On the other end, we permit the sale, purchase and ownership of “drug paraphernalia” even though it may facilitate illegal drug use. In between, states have different policies about the legality of radar detectors and jammers; while their use is presumably harmless in the abstract, they facilitate speeding by helping speeders evade detection and punishment.

Here, we’re talking about whether to restrict the use of a legal substance (tobacco-like gum) to influence the use of a legal substance (tobacco). If we permit the sale and use of drug paraphernalia, surely we’d have to permit the use and sale of this stuff.

Yeah, it’s nasty, dry, and lacerates the roof of my mouth. Maybe there otta be a law against that, but so far there ain’t. On the other hand, I bet the stuff is made in China. So if you want to get it banned, test it for toxic substances or put on Utube a video of prison laborers making it as they’re having their kidneys recycled. But I don’t see much merit in banning it based on its propensity for induce tobacco use among kids.